San Fransicko

Why Progressives Ruin Cities

By: Michael Shellenberger

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

National bestselling author of APOCALYPSE NEVER skewers progressives for the mishandling of America’s faltering cities.

Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.

Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison. But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem.

What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies. San Francisco and other West Coast cities — Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland — had gone beyond merely tolerating homelessness, drug dealing, and crime to actively enabling them.

San Fransicko reveals that the underlying problem isn’t a lack of housing or money for social programs. The real problem is an ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims entitled to destructive behaviors. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible.

Must Read

Great perspective of what needs to be done to start healing our cities. awesomeness. Split between the politics and cut to the issue without blaming sides.

The Homeless Industrial Complex is here to stay

Homelessness is obviously a tough problem but despite the best intentions, the progressives in LA, SF, and Seattle are making it worse. Much worse than comparable cities. At the heart, many of the unsheltered homeless in these cities are addicted to drugs and/or have mental health issues and these cities provide these addicts with free needles, free money to buy drugs, and have no consequences for using, stealing or an assortment of other illegal activities. It's no wonder there are problems. We should all be for compassion but the approach needs to be much more balanced. Like raising kids, there needs to be consequences for actions. I also find the libertarian approach with drug users and mental health patients (i.e. do nothing unless they come for help) at odds with the progressives' forced mask mandates and forced vaccinations. In one case you can't interfere with one's agency over their body, and, in the Covid case, you can force government intervention over their body. It doesn't seem logically consistent. Finally, I think a lot of this comes down to the Homeless Industrial Complex. There are so many agencies dealing with homelessness and so much money available, they don't truly want to stop homelessness. If they did, they would be out of a job.

Outstanding book. Incredible account of SF failure

This book is nothing short of brilliant and illuminating. If you've stepped foot in SF -- let alone lived here -- you'll know that something is terribly wrong with this city. This book helped explain what is wrong with San Francisco, and offered solutions on how to fix things. I hope the messages in this book spread to as many people as possible. Despite the public vitriol against SF, I remain optimistic that we can fix it. This book helps to offer some solutions in addition to simply pointing out why it's so broken. A must read for any SF citizen.

Informative

Technical and can get deep into details, but Chapters 14 through Chapter 19 (the end of the book) provides good clarity as to some of the factors behind homelessness. Chapter 17 provides the bottom line.
It would have been beneficial if the book started with the reasons of homelessness stated in Chapter 17 in the introduction to set the expectation for the rest of the book.
Overall good book.

Complete and thoughtful

A complete and well researched deep dive into the very complex and multifaceted problem of homelessness. It covers the stigmas and ideologies that shape progressive strategies on psychiatric illness, crime, drug addiction, and governmental roles in the issue of homelessness. Well researched and well structured.